Chapter 29

Additional Christological Problems

Beatific Vision, Theosis, and Sanctification

Introduction: Three More Problems Physicalism Cannot Solve

Throughout Part V of this book, we have been building a cumulative case that physicalism about human nature creates devastating problems for orthodox Christology. We have examined the dissolution of the hypostatic union at the cross (Chapters 21–22), the impossibility of the descent to the dead (Chapter 23), the personal identity crisis at the resurrection (Chapter 24), the problems surrounding the virgin birth (Chapter 25), the undermining of the permanent incarnation (Chapter 26), the Pelagian implications for Christ's sinlessness (Chapter 27), and the breakdown of Trinitarian personhood (Chapter 28). Each of these problems, taken individually, would be a serious difficulty for physicalism. Taken together, they form a wall of evidence that physicalism simply cannot sustain the Christology that the ecumenical councils defined and that the church has confessed for nearly two thousand years.

But the problems do not stop there. In this chapter, I want to explore three additional areas where physicalism creates serious theological difficulties — areas that have not always received the attention they deserve in the debate over human nature and Christology. These three areas are the beatific vision, theosis (also called deification or divinization), and sanctification. All three of these doctrines presuppose that human beings have an immaterial dimension — a soul or spirit — that is the primary locus of our encounter with God, our participation in the divine life, and our transformation into Christlikeness. If physicalism is true, and there is no immaterial soul, then each of these doctrines is radically undermined — or reduced to something far less than the Christian tradition has always understood them to be.

Here is the chapter's thesis in a single sentence: physicalism cannot adequately account for the beatific vision (the direct knowledge of God enjoyed by Christ's human soul and promised to the saints), theosis (the participation of human nature in the divine life), or sanctification (the inner transformation of the person by the Holy Spirit), because all three doctrines require an immaterial dimension of the human person that physicalism denies.

We will also explore a fourth and closely related argument: that Christ is the paradigm of sanctified and glorified humanity, and since His human nature — as defined by the ecumenical councils — includes an immaterial rational soul, our human nature must include one as well. This argument, powerfully developed by Michael Wilkinson in his groundbreaking work Crowned with Glory and Honor, reverses the usual direction of theological reasoning. Instead of starting with a philosophical theory about what human beings are and then applying it to Christ, we start with Christ — the definitive human being, the second Adam, the firstborn among many brothers — and derive our anthropology from Him.¹ If Christ's humanity includes a soul, then humanity includes a soul. It really is that straightforward.

Let us begin with the beatific vision.

I. The Beatific Vision: Can a Brain State Constitute Direct Knowledge of God?

A. The Doctrine of the Beatific Vision

The beatific vision — from the Latin visio beatifica, meaning "blessed seeing" — is one of the great doctrines of the Christian faith. It refers to the direct, unmediated knowledge and experience of God that the redeemed will enjoy in the life to come. The apostle Paul spoke of it in one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture:

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:12, ESV)

The language here is striking. Paul contrasts our current way of knowing God — partial, indirect, like looking into a dim ancient mirror — with a future way of knowing God that will be complete, direct, and face to face. The Greek phrase prosōpon pros prosōpon (πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον) literally means "face to face." It echoes Moses's encounter with God in Exodus 33:11 and points forward to the eschatological promise that God's people will one day see Him as He truly is.

The apostle John made a similar promise: "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2, ESV). Notice the connection John draws between seeing God and being transformed. The vision of God is not merely intellectual — it is transformative. It changes us. It makes us "like him." This is the beating heart of the beatific vision: a direct encounter with God that completes our transformation into His likeness.

The Christian theological tradition has reflected deeply on this doctrine for centuries. Thomas Aquinas understood the beatific vision as an intellectual and immaterial exercise — the soul, freed from the limitations of bodily existence, gazes upon God through the eyes of the intellect.² For Aquinas, this vision is the supreme act of the human intellect, the highest happiness of which a creature is capable. It is not a sensory experience — it is not seeing with physical eyes. It is a spiritual seeing, an intellectual beholding, in which the soul knows God immediately and without any intervening medium.

This understanding was not unique to Aquinas or to the medieval period. The Reformed tradition continued the same emphasis. Francis Turretin, the great seventeenth-century Reformed theologian, described the vision as "the most perfect and clear knowledge of God and of divine things, such as can belong to the finite creature."³ He insisted that the vision is known by "a spiritual and internal vision alone" — that is, it is the soul that gazes at God, not the physical eyes. Turretin used a series of adjectives to describe the nature of the vision: mental, intellectual, internal, supernatural, intuitive, beatific, adequate, and comprehensive. Every single one of these adjectives points to an immaterial activity of the soul.⁴

John Calvin, too, reflected the same instinct. While Calvin did not develop a full systematic treatment of the beatific vision, his anthropology clearly prioritized the soul. He committed himself to the view that the soul or mind is more fundamental than the body, writing, "Now I understand by the term 'soul' an immortal yet created essence, which is his nobler part."⁵ For Calvin, it is the soul and its powers that provide the connectedness to God, because the soul has primacy with respect to the imago Dei — the image of God in humanity.

Jonathan Edwards, arguably the greatest American theologian, was even more explicit. Edwards described the beatific vision as "immaterial" and "intellectual" precisely because God is immaterial and must be encountered not with bodily eyes but with the soul. He wrote, "The soul has in itself those powers, whereby 'tis sufficiently capable of apprehending spiritual objects, without looking through the window of the outward senses. The soul is capable of seeing God more immediately and more certainly, and more fully and gloriously, than the eye of the body is."⁶ For Edwards, the soul's capacities are sufficient — and indeed, superior — for the vision of God. Physical eyes see the sun, but the soul sees God. This novel knowledge is not arrived at by inference or by sensory observation. It is known immediately, in direct experience.

The Reformed theologian John Owen placed Christ at the center of the beatific vision. Owen declared, "The beholding of the glory of Christ is one of the greatest privileges and advancements that believers are capable of in this world, or that which is to come."⁷ For Owen, God in His immense essence remains invisible to our bodily eyes and will remain so for eternity. The blessed sight of God will always be "in the face of Jesus Christ." Yet even in this christological framing, the vision itself is intellectual and immaterial — it is the soul that beholds Christ, and through Christ, the Father.⁸

B. Christ's Human Soul and the Beatific Vision

The doctrine of the beatific vision has a special christological dimension that is often overlooked. Much of the Catholic tradition holds that Christ's human soul enjoyed the beatific vision — the direct knowledge of God — from the very first moment of the Incarnation, or at least from early in His earthly life. The logic is straightforward: Christ's human soul was united to the divine Person of the Son in the hypostatic union. This unique union meant that Christ's human intellect had an unparalleled proximity to the divine essence. Even on earth, His human soul had access to a knowledge of God that surpassed anything enjoyed by any other human being.

On the kryptic model of the Incarnation that I find most compelling — Andrew Ter Ern Loke's Divine Preconscious Model — this understanding of Christ's beatific knowledge fits naturally. Loke argues that Christ's divine attributes, including omniscience, were not surrendered at the Incarnation (contra kenoticism) but were concealed at a "preconscious" level. They were present, available, and accessible when the Father willed it, but they did not constantly flood Christ's waking human consciousness.⁹ The beatific vision of Christ's human soul can be understood along similar lines: Christ's human intellect had a direct, immediate, and perfect knowledge of the Father — a knowledge that was always "there," though it did not overwhelm His genuinely human conscious experience. This is what allowed Christ to grow in wisdom (Luke 2:52) while simultaneously possessing, at the preconscious level, a knowledge of the Father that no other human has ever had.

The key point here is that this entire framework presupposes a human soul. The beatific vision — whether in Christ during His earthly life, in the saints during the intermediate state, or in the redeemed at the final resurrection — is an activity of the soul, not of the brain. It is an intellectual and spiritual seeing, not a neurological event. And this creates a devastating problem for physicalism.

C. The Physicalist Problem

If physicalism is true, there is no immaterial soul. There is no intellect apart from the brain. There is no "inner eye" of the soul that can gaze upon God. Every mental event — every thought, every experience, every act of knowing — is identical to or entirely constituted by a physical brain state: a particular pattern of neural firing, a specific configuration of electrochemical impulses.

On this view, what is the beatific vision? It can only be a brain state. A particularly intense, particularly complex, particularly wonderful brain state — but a brain state nonetheless. The direct knowledge of God that Paul promises, that Aquinas analyzed, that Edwards celebrated, is reduced to a pattern of neurons firing in a certain way.

But can a brain state constitute genuine direct knowledge of God? I believe the answer is no, and I think we can see why by reflecting on what the tradition has always understood the beatific vision to involve.

First, the beatific vision is a spiritual vision, not a sensory one. It is the soul that sees God, not the eyes. But on physicalism, there is no soul to see anything. The only "seeing" is physical — photons hitting retinal cells, signals traveling up the optic nerve, patterns forming in the visual cortex. Can the visual cortex see God? Can the frontal lobe know the Father? The question almost answers itself. God is spirit (John 4:24). He is immaterial, invisible, and infinite. A direct encounter with this God requires a faculty that transcends the physical — an intellect that is not bound by the limitations of neural tissue. As Edwards put it, the soul is "capable of apprehending spiritual objects, without looking through the window of the outward senses."¹⁰ On physicalism, there is no such faculty.

Second, the beatific vision is immediate and unmediated. The soul knows God directly — not through images, concepts, or representations, but face to face. But on physicalism, every act of knowing is mediated by the brain. Knowledge is a function of neural processing — input, computation, output. There is no direct access to anything; everything is filtered through the brain's electrochemical apparatus. Can such an apparatus provide the unmediated, face-to-face knowledge of God that the beatific vision promises? It seems very difficult to see how.

Third, the beatific vision is transformative. It changes the person who experiences it. As John says, "we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). On dualism, this transformation is a real ontological change in the soul — the soul is elevated, purified, and conformed to the divine image through direct contact with God. On physicalism, the "transformation" can only be a change in brain chemistry. Neural pathways are rewired. Synaptic connections are strengthened or weakened. Is this really what John had in mind? Is the transformation promised by the beatific vision nothing more than neuroplasticity?

D. Anticipating the Physicalist Response

A physicalist might respond in several ways. Let me address the most important ones fairly.

First, a physicalist might argue that God can communicate with a physical brain directly — that He can produce the relevant brain states without the need for an immaterial soul as a mediator. After all, if God is omnipotent, He can produce any brain state He wishes. And if the right brain state constitutes the "beatific vision," then God can produce it in a purely physical creature.

This response has a surface plausibility. God is certainly capable of acting on the physical world, including the brain. But the response confuses the cause of the vision with its nature. The question is not whether God can produce certain brain states — of course He can. The question is whether a brain state, however God produces it, can constitute a genuine direct knowledge of God. The tradition has consistently said no. The beatific vision is not merely a mental event caused by God; it is a direct encounter of the intellect with the divine essence. On physicalism, there is no intellect apart from the brain, and the brain — however stimulated — remains a physical organ incapable of the kind of unmediated spiritual apprehension that the vision requires.

Second, a physicalist might argue that the language of "soul" and "intellect" in the tradition is merely metaphorical — a way of speaking about brain functions using pre-scientific terminology. On this view, Aquinas and Edwards were simply describing brain events in the language available to them; we now know better.

But this response is historically and theologically inaccurate. Aquinas, Edwards, Turretin, and the rest were not pre-scientific thinkers groping for language. They explicitly and deliberately distinguished between the soul's intellectual vision and the body's sensory vision. They knew the difference. They insisted that the beatific vision is not a sensory experience but an intellectual one — an act of the immaterial intellect, not of the physical eyes or brain. To reduce their carefully articulated doctrine to a metaphor for brain activity is to misread them fundamentally.

Third, a physicalist might suggest that Nancey Murphy's proposal provides a way forward. Murphy has suggested that God might communicate with us through quantum-level phenomena in the brain.¹¹ If so, perhaps the beatific vision could be understood as a quantum-level divine communication within the physical brain. But as R. Scott Smith has argued in his devastating critique of physicalism and sanctification, whatever quantum phenomena are, on Murphy's view they must fit within her ontologically reductive physicalism. There is no real intentionality — no genuine "aboutness" or "directedness" — in quantum events. And without intentionality, there is no genuine knowledge, no genuine encounter, no genuine vision of God.¹²

The physicalist responses, taken individually or together, fail to account for the beatific vision as the Christian tradition has understood it. The vision requires a soul. Physicalism denies the soul. Therefore, physicalism undermines the beatific vision.

II. Theosis: Can a Physical Organism Participate in the Divine Nature?

A. The Doctrine of Theosis

Theosis — also called deification or divinization — is one of the richest and most profound doctrines in all of Christian theology. At its simplest, theosis is the teaching that human beings are called to become "partakers of the divine nature." The classic biblical text is 2 Peter 1:3–4:

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and goodness, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." (2 Peter 1:3–4, ESV)

The Greek phrase theias koinōnoi physeōs (θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως) — "partakers of the divine nature" — is extraordinary. Peter is telling us that God's plan for redeemed humanity is not merely forgiveness of sins, not merely eternal life in some generic sense, but actual participation in the very nature of God. Not that we become God — the Creator-creature distinction is absolute and permanent. But we share in divine characteristics. We participate in divine life. We are drawn into the fellowship of the Trinity itself.

The church fathers made theosis a central theme of their theology. The phrase often attributed to Athanasius captures the logic beautifully: "God became man so that man might become God."¹³ The Incarnation is the ground and basis of theosis. Because the Son of God assumed human nature, human nature can be elevated and transformed to participate in the divine life. The two movements — God's descent to us and our ascent to God — are inseparable. The Incarnation makes theosis possible.

The Eastern Orthodox tradition has been especially rich in its development of this doctrine, though it is by no means exclusively Eastern. As Joshua Farris has noted, while the Reformed and evangelical traditions are often characterized as understanding deification solely in terms of moral transformation, the Reformed tradition throughout history has actually had a more robust place for deification as holistic and describing human purpose eschatologically.¹⁴ The Scriptures themselves, read theologically, point in this more robust direction. Several New Testament concepts build on the idea that our purpose is union with God, including adoption (Romans 8), Christ as the image of God (2 Corinthians 3–4), immortality (2 Timothy 1:10), and glory (Romans 2:7).¹⁵

B. Theosis and the Incarnation: Maximus the Confessor

The connection between the Incarnation and theosis was worked out with particular depth and precision by Maximus the Confessor (580–662), one of the greatest theologians in the church's history. Maximus, working within the framework of Chalcedonian Christology, affirmed the union of the divine and human natures in the single person of Christ. He also affirmed dyothelitism — that Christ has two distinct wills corresponding to two distinct natures (the divine will and the human will). This christological framework shaped his understanding of human deification.

For Maximus, the Incarnation itself is the paradigm of deification. In the person of Christ, human nature is united to divine nature without confusion or mixture. Christ's humanity takes on divine characteristics — incorruption, glory, power — through the hypostatic union, while remaining genuinely human. As Ben Blackwell and Kris Miller have explained Maximus's thought, "The communication of properties from this intimate union results in the deification of Christ's humanity." Maximus used the illustration of a sword placed in a fire: the iron does not cease to be iron, but it takes on the properties of fire — it emits light and heat. In the same way, Christ's humanity remains human but takes on the characteristics of divinity through the union with the Logos.¹⁶

The key insight is this: the deification of Christ's humanity is paradigmatic — it is the model and the basis — for the deification of all redeemed humanity. As Blackwell and Miller summarize Maximus's view, "Maximus understands deification as the fulfillment of God's creational intent expressed in the language of the 'image and likeness of God.' ... The eschatological culmination of salvation is 'eternal well being' where believers participate in God's incorruption noetically and somatically, reintegrating image and likeness."¹⁷ Notice the two dimensions: "noetically" (relating to the mind or intellect — the immaterial dimension) and "somatically" (relating to the body — the material dimension). Theosis involves the whole person — body and soul. But the noetic or intellectual dimension is primary. The soul is the primary locus where participation in the divine nature takes place.

C. The Reformed Tradition and Theosis

It is important to note that theosis is not exclusively an Eastern Orthodox concern. The Reformed tradition has its own rich engagement with the concept, though it uses different language and draws different boundaries. True to its Christology, the Reformed tradition has typically highlighted the distinction between the divine and human natures of Christ, and this emphasis shapes how Reformed theologians describe the culmination of deification.

Carl Mosser and others have argued that key Reformed figures — including Calvin himself — operated with a concept that closely parallels Eastern theosis, even if they did not use the same terminology.¹⁸ The Reformed emphasis on union with Christ (unio cum Christo) — which is central to Calvin's soteriology — involves a real participation in the life of the risen Christ that transforms the believer from the inside out. This is not merely a legal declaration (justification) but an actual ontological transformation (sanctification leading to glorification).

What is crucial for our purposes is that this transformation, across the tradition, is understood to involve primarily the immaterial dimension of the person. The soul is transformed; the mind is renewed; the will is reoriented. The body participates too, especially at the final resurrection, but the primary locus of theosis or union with Christ is the soul.

D. Charles Hodge and the Beatific Transformation of the Soul

Before moving to the physicalist problem with theosis, it is worth noting one more voice from the Reformed tradition. The great nineteenth-century theologian Charles Hodge continued the trajectory we have been tracing. While Hodge placed his discussion of the beatific vision after the final bodily resurrection, he gave clear priority to the soul. He described the vision in transformative terms: the vision "beatifies. It transforms the soul into the divine image; transfusing into it the divine life, so that it is filled with the fullness of God."³² Notice that Hodge directs the beatific elements toward the soul — not the body. He further described the vision as involving "the indefinite enlargement of all the saints' faculties" and the "constant increase in knowledge and in the useful exercise of all their powers." The emphasis on soul, faculties, knowledge, and powers — all of which are immaterial categories — confirms what we have been arguing: the beatific vision, across the tradition, is understood as an activity of the soul, requiring an immaterial intellect capable of direct, spiritual knowledge of God.

The consistent testimony of the tradition — from Aquinas through the Reformation and into the modern period — leaves no room for doubt on this point. The beatific vision is not a brain event. It is a soul event. And any anthropology that denies the soul's existence effectively denies the possibility of the beatific vision as the tradition has understood it. This includes physicalism.

E. The Physicalist Problem with Theosis

Now let us press the question: what happens to the doctrine of theosis if physicalism is true?

If there is no immaterial soul, then what is "deified"? What participates in the divine nature? On physicalism, the answer can only be: a physical organism. The human body — flesh, blood, neurons, synapses — participates in the divine nature.

But what does it mean for a physical organism to "participate in the divine nature"? The divine nature is immaterial. God is spirit (John 4:24). God is invisible (Colossians 1:15). God does not have neurons, synapses, or electrochemical impulses. The divine nature is characterized by properties that are utterly unlike physical properties: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, perfect holiness, infinite love. How does a collection of carbon atoms "participate" in these properties?

On dualism, the answer is natural and elegant. The soul — the immaterial dimension of the person — is the primary locus of theosis. The soul shares certain structural features with the divine nature: it is immaterial, it is the seat of consciousness and intellect, it is capable of knowledge and love and will. There is what we might call a "metaphysical bridge" between the human soul and the divine nature. The soul can be elevated by grace to participate in the divine life because it already shares the fundamental characteristic of immateriality with God. It is like being raised to meet like. The iron sword meets the fire, as Maximus said, and takes on the fire's properties while remaining iron — but notice that the iron must be placed in the fire. There must be contact, a meeting point. The soul is that meeting point between the human and the divine.

On physicalism, there is no such bridge. The physical organism is radically unlike the divine nature. There is no shared characteristic, no meeting point, no locus of contact between the purely material human and the purely immaterial God. Theosis becomes a mystery not in the positive theological sense (a truth too deep for human comprehension) but in the negative sense (an incoherence — a claim that does not make sense given the metaphysical commitments of physicalism).

This is not to say that God cannot act on physical organisms. Of course He can. He created them. He sustains them. He interacts with them. But theosis is more than divine action on a passive physical object. Theosis is participation — the human person sharing in the divine life, entering into the fellowship of the Trinity, being transformed from within by the presence of God. This requires an inner dimension, a spiritual center, a soul. Physicalism denies such a center exists. And in doing so, it undermines one of the most glorious promises of the Christian faith.

E. The Incarnation as the Ground of Theosis — and What Physicalism Does to It

We should pause to consider the specifically christological implications. If the Incarnation is the ground of theosis — if "God became man so that man might become God" — then the nature of Christ's humanity has direct implications for the nature of our deification.

If Christ's human nature includes an immaterial soul (as the councils insist), then the deification of His humanity involves the elevation and transformation of both body and soul. The soul, united to the divine Person of the Son, is the primary point of contact between the divine and the human in the hypostatic union. And if Christ's deified humanity is the paradigm for ours, then our deification must follow the same pattern: body and soul united to God, with the soul as the primary locus of participation in the divine nature.

But if physicalism is true, and Christ has no immaterial soul, then Christ's "deified" humanity is simply a divine Person united to a physical body. The hypostatic union is not between the divine and a complete human nature (body + soul) but between the divine and a physical organism. And if Christ's deification is the paradigm for ours, then our deification is merely the transformation of our physical organisms — our neurons, our chemistry, our biology. This is a pale shadow of what Athanasius, Maximus, and the entire tradition meant by theosis.

III. Sanctification: Is the Transformation of the "Inner Man" Really Just Neural Rewiring?

A. The Biblical Portrait of Sanctification

Sanctification — the process of becoming holy, of being made more like Christ — is one of the most practically important doctrines in the Christian life. Every genuine believer experiences it. The Holy Spirit works in us, transforming our thoughts, desires, habits, and character to conform us to the image of Christ. Paul described it powerfully:

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16, ESV)

This verse is assigned to this chapter as its primary exegetical locus, and it deserves careful attention. Paul draws a stark contrast between two dimensions of the person: the "outer self" (ho exō hēmōn anthrōpos, ὁ ἔξω ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος — literally, "the outer man of us") and the "inner self" (ho esō hēmōn anthrōpos, ὁ ἔσω ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος — "the inner man of us"). The outer self is wasting away — aging, weakening, decaying, moving toward death. But the inner self is being renewed — refreshed, strengthened, transformed, day by day.

The language could hardly be more dualistic. Paul distinguishes between an outer, physical, visible dimension of the person that deteriorates and an inner, invisible dimension of the person that is being renewed by God. On substance dualism, this makes perfect sense: the body wastes away while the soul is being transformed by the Holy Spirit. On physicalism, there is no "inner man" distinct from the body. The "outer self" and the "inner self" are both the body — one is perhaps the body's visible physical condition, and the other is perhaps the body's neural states. But this reading drains the passage of its power and its point. Paul is not saying, "My body is wasting away, but my brain chemistry is improving." He is saying something far more profound: there is a dimension of his being that transcends the physical and is being renewed even as the physical dimension declines.

Paul made a similar distinction in Romans 8:16: "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (ESV). The Greek phrase to pneuma hēmōn (τὸ πνεῦμα ἡμῶν) — "our spirit" — refers to the inner, immaterial dimension of the human person. The Holy Spirit communicates with our spirit — spirit to spirit, the immaterial divine Spirit testifying together with the immaterial human spirit. On physicalism, "our spirit" is simply a neural state. The Holy Spirit bears witness with — what? A pattern of electrochemical activity in the prefrontal cortex? The idea is not merely theologically awkward; it is absurd.

The Bible consistently describes the process of sanctification in terms that presuppose an immaterial inner life. Consider a few key texts:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." (Romans 12:2, ESV)

"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)

"Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and ... be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and ... put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:22–24, ESV)

"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:23, ESV)

Notice the consistent pattern: sanctification involves the transformation of the mind, the spirit, the inner person. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul explicitly names three dimensions — spirit (pneuma, πνεῦμα), soul (psychē, ψυχή), and body (sōma, σῶμα) — and prays that all three be sanctified. Whether this is a strict trichotomy or simply Paul's way of emphasizing the whole person, the point is clear: there are dimensions of the person beyond the physical body that are the objects of sanctification.¹⁹

B. The Received Christian Tradition on Sanctification and the Soul

The Christian tradition has always understood sanctification as involving the transformation of the soul by the Holy Spirit. R. Scott Smith, in his important essay "Sanctification and Physicalism" in the volume Christian Physicalism?, makes this point clearly. The received Christian tradition has understood the abilities involved in becoming like Christ — moral transformation, intellectual growth, volitional reorientation — as involving a body-soul unity in humans, along with various mental states (thoughts, beliefs, desires) and immaterial properties (moral and intellectual virtues).²⁰

Aquinas understood the virtues as qualities of the soul. Augustine treated the soul as the seat of the image of God and the locus of our relationship with God. Calvin described the soul as "an immortal yet created essence" that connects us to God. These are not incidental comments by pre-scientific thinkers who did not know better. They are carefully reasoned theological conclusions based on Scripture and philosophical reflection. The entire tradition — Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant — has agreed: sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit on the soul.

Brandon Rickabaugh and C. Stephen Evans, in their essay "Neuroscience, Spiritual Formation, and Bodily Souls" in the same volume, make a complementary argument. They note that spiritual formation — the practical process of sanctification — is the area of Christian theology that studies how disciples of Jesus are formed into His image (Romans 8:28–29; 2 Corinthians 3:18). As a natural part of salvation, spiritual formation includes every aspect of our being, "spirit, soul, and body" (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24), because it is the whole person that is sanctified.²¹ But the whole person, they argue, is a body-soul composite — not merely a physical organism. If we remove the soul from the picture, we remove the primary locus of spiritual transformation.

C. The Physicalist Reduction of Sanctification

On physicalism, what is sanctification? It can only be the rewiring of neural pathways. The Holy Spirit's work of transforming the "inner man" is reduced to the alteration of brain chemistry — the strengthening of certain synaptic connections, the weakening of others, the reconfiguration of neural networks. "Being renewed in the spirit of your minds" (Ephesians 4:23) becomes: having your prefrontal cortex restructured. "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit" (Romans 8:16) becomes: the Spirit produces certain electrochemical patterns in our neurons.

Now, I want to be fair here. No thoughtful physicalist wants to say that sanctification is "just" neural rewiring in a dismissive sense. Christian physicalists like Nancey Murphy affirm the reality of sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit. They believe that the Holy Spirit genuinely transforms believers. Their claim is simply that this transformation happens in and through the physical — that the soul-language of the Bible can be translated into the language of physical processes without loss of meaning.

But I believe there is a significant loss of meaning — and a significant theological problem. Let me explain why through three lines of argument.

First, physicalism undermines the interpersonal nature of sanctification. Smith argues persuasively that sanctification necessarily involves believers growing in relationship with the Lord and with one another. We need to know what is on the Lord's heart and mind. He wants us to have a deep, rich, experiential relationship with Him. But interpersonal relationships require genuine intentionality — the capacity for thoughts, beliefs, desires, and experiences to be "about" or "directed toward" another person. On physicalism, there is no real intentionality; there are only physical processes that we describe as if they were about something. If there is no genuine intentionality, there can be no genuine relationship — and if there can be no genuine relationship, there can be no genuine sanctification through relationship with God.²²

Second, physicalism undermines the knowledge required for sanctification. To become like Christ, we must know Christ — know His character, His will, His heart. We must have the "mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16). But knowledge, on physicalism, is problematic. If our thoughts are nothing but electrochemical events in our brains — events determined by prior physical causes — then our "knowledge" is not genuine knowledge but merely the output of a physical system. We have no more reason to trust our thoughts about Christ than we have to trust the outputs of a calculator that is randomly malfunctioning. The argument from reason — developed by C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga — applies here with full force. If our cognitive faculties are the products of blind physical processes, we have no warrant for trusting them, including our beliefs about sanctification, Christ, or the Bible (see Chapter 4 for the full development of this argument).

Third, physicalism undermines moral transformation. Virtue — genuine moral character — has traditionally been understood as a quality of the soul. Courage, patience, love, gentleness, self-control — these are stable dispositions of the soul's will and intellect, empowered by the Holy Spirit. On physicalism, virtues are brain states — particular configurations of neural activity. But brain states are constantly changing, determined by prior physical causes (genetics, environment, diet, sleep, medication). If courage is a brain state, then taking a pill that alters your brain chemistry could make you courageous. But we would not normally say that someone who becomes "brave" through a pill has acquired the virtue of courage. Virtue is more than a brain state. It involves genuine choices, genuine character formation, genuine growth of the soul. Physicalism reduces virtue to neurochemistry, and in doing so, it robs sanctification of its moral and spiritual depth.²³

Smith concludes his analysis with a devastating observation: on physicalism, we would be like philosophical zombies — creatures that are alive and that behave as if they have inner lives, but that actually lack conscious experiences, genuine thoughts, genuine beliefs, and genuine relationships. Such creatures cannot have interpersonal relationships with God. They cannot grow in the knowledge of Christ. They cannot be transformed in virtue. In short, they cannot be sanctified.²⁴

D. The Christological Dimension of the Sanctification Problem

There is a specifically christological dimension to the sanctification problem that is often overlooked. As Smith rightly observes, sanctification involves becoming like Christ. The goal of sanctification is Christlikeness — conformity to the image of the Son (Romans 8:29). But if Christ's own human nature included a soul — if His inner life of prayer, love, obedience, and communion with the Father was the life of a human soul united to the divine Person — then our sanctification must involve the same kind of inner transformation. We are being made like Him. We are being conformed to His image. And His image includes a soul.

On physicalism, Christ's inner life was merely brain activity. His prayers in Gethsemane were neural events. His love for His disciples was electrochemistry. His obedience to the Father was a brain state caused by prior physical states. If this is what Christ's inner life was, then becoming "like Christ" means having our brain states reconfigured to match His. But this is not what the Bible describes. The Bible describes a real person with a real inner life — a soul that grieved, a spirit that rejoiced, a will that chose, a mind that knew the Father — and it calls us to be transformed into the same likeness (as argued in Chapter 8, where the inner life of Christ is examined in detail).

IV. Christ as the Paradigm of Sanctified Humanity

A. Wilkinson's Chalcedonian Anthropology

We come now to the fourth and final argument of this chapter, and it is in some ways the most powerful of all. It is the argument that Christ's human nature — as defined by the ecumenical councils — is the paradigm for our human nature, and that since Christ's human nature includes an immaterial rational soul, our human nature must include one as well.

This argument has been developed with particular force and sophistication by Michael Wilkinson in his groundbreaking work Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology. Wilkinson's central insight is deceptively simple: if we want to know what a human being is, we should look at the human being — Jesus Christ, the man par excellence, the paradigm of true humanity. Christ is not merely one human being among many; He is the definitive human being, the one in whom human nature is fully and perfectly realized. His human nature, as defined by the Council of Chalcedon (451), consists of "a rational soul and a body" (ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos) — a body and an immaterial, rational soul.²⁵

Wilkinson argues that the usual direction of theological reasoning — starting with a philosophical anthropology and then applying it to Christ — should be reversed. Instead of asking "What is a human being?" and then applying the answer to Christ, we should ask "What is Christ's human nature?" and then apply the answer to humanity. This is what Wilkinson calls a "Chalcedonian anthropology": the person-nature ontology of Christology, properly adjusted, must also define our understanding of human beings.²⁶

The logic of Wilkinson's argument can be laid out in a series of connected steps:

Step 1: Scripture presents Jesus Christ as the paradigmatic human being — the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45–49), the "firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29), the one in whom all things human find their true meaning and fulfillment. Christ is the image of God (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3) — the perfect realization of what it means to bear God's image. If we want to know what a true human being looks like, we look at Him.

Step 2: The ecumenical councils — particularly Chalcedon — define Christ's human nature as consisting of "a rational soul and a body." This is not negotiable for anyone who affirms conciliar Christology. Christ's humanity is not merely a body. It is a body-soul composite. He has an immaterial, rational soul with its own intellect and will.

Step 3: If Christ is the paradigmatic human being, and Christ's human nature includes a rational soul, then human nature as such includes a rational soul. The paradigm defines the type. You cannot say that Christ has a soul but that human beings in general do not, because Christ's humanity is the model for ours. What is true of the man must be true of mere man — with appropriate analogical adjustments for the difference between the divine Person of the Son and created human persons, of course, but without removing any essential component of human nature.²⁷

Step 4: Physicalism denies that human beings have immaterial souls. Therefore, physicalism contradicts the Chalcedonian definition of human nature as exemplified in Christ. It offers an anthropology that is incompatible with the Christology of the councils. And any anthropology that is incompatible with conciliar Christology is — to put it bluntly — heretical, because it implicitly denies that Christ has a complete human nature.

B. The Person-Nature Framework and Its Implications

Wilkinson develops his argument further by showing that the Chalcedonian Definition provides not just a list of components (body + soul) but a person-nature framework that should govern our understanding of all human beings. In Christ, the divine Person of the Son subsists in two natures — a divine nature and a human nature. The human nature consists of a body and a rational soul, and the Person of the Son is the acting subject who acts through this human nature with all of its attendant capacities, including a human intellect and will.²⁸

For ordinary human beings, the analogy is adjusted: the human person (a created hypostasis, not a divine one) subsists in a human nature (body + soul) and acts through it. The structure is the same — person subsisting in nature, acting through it — even though the persons are different (divine in Christ's case, human in ours). This is what Wilkinson calls the "Chalcedonian analogy": the internal analogy within the Chalcedonian Definition itself, between Christ's divine person-nature relation and his human person-nature relation, extended outward to define human being in general.²⁹

The implications for physicalism are severe. Physicalism does not merely deny the soul; it eliminates the person-nature framework entirely. On physicalism, there is no nature distinct from the person and no person distinct from the nature. The person is the physical organism. There is nothing "deeper" — no hypostasis that subsists in and acts through a nature. The entire conceptual architecture of Chalcedonian Christology — and the Chalcedonian anthropology that flows from it — collapses.

C. Christ's Glorified Human Nature as Our Destiny

The paradigm argument has a powerful eschatological dimension as well. Christ's glorified human nature — body and soul united to the divine Person, raised and exalted and seated at the right hand of the Father — is what our redeemed humanity will look like. Paul makes this connection explicitly:

"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Romans 8:29, ESV)

Christ is the "firstborn among many brothers." He is the first to reach the destiny that all of the redeemed will share. His glorified humanity is the template for ours. We will be like Him (1 John 3:2). Our bodies will be transformed to be like His glorious body (Philippians 3:21). And — on the dualist view — our souls will be perfectly conformed to His, fully sanctified, fully united to God, fully participating in the divine life.

On physicalism, our redeemed humanity is just a glorified physical body with no soul. But Christ's human nature, as defined by the councils, includes a soul. If Christ's glorified humanity includes a soul, and if our destiny is to be conformed to His image, then our glorified humanity must include a soul as well. Physicalism, by denying the soul, denies us the very thing that makes our eschatological destiny coherent.

D. The Mediatorial Sense of the Argument

Wilkinson also shows that the person-nature constitution of human beings makes good "mediatorial sense" of the work accomplished by Christ. Four points of contact illustrate the coherence between Christ's mediatorial ontology and Chalcedonian anthropology.³⁰

First, redemption requires the person-in-nature sacrifice of Christ on behalf of sinful humanity. And we can see how this corresponds with the person-in-nature guilt of sinful humanity — guilt that is not merely a physical condition but a condition of the whole person, body and soul.

Second, the person-through-nature obedience of Christ must be imputed to sinful humanity. Just as Christ the person acted through His human nature in obedience to the Father, sinful humanity has acted through its nature in rebellion against God.

Third, positional sanctification involves the person-in-nature image of God perfected in humanity by Christ. The restoration of the imago Dei removes the corruption of the person-in-nature image of fallen humanity.

Fourth, progressive sanctification involves the person-through-nature life of Christ that provides the paradigm for redeemed humanity. Our sanctification is accomplished as our persons act through our natures in conformity to the pattern set by Christ.

In each of these points, the person-nature framework is essential. Without it — without the distinction between person and nature, soul and body — the mediatorial work of Christ loses its symmetry, its logic, and its power. Physicalism, by collapsing person and nature into a single physical entity, undermines the very structure that makes Christ's saving work intelligible.

V. Addressing Counterarguments

A. "The Beatific Vision Is an Eschatological Hope, Not a Present Reality"

Some may object that the beatific vision is a future hope, not a present experience, and that we cannot draw conclusions about human nature from a state we have not yet experienced. But this misses the point. The argument is not about whether we currently experience the beatific vision. The argument is about what kind of being can experience it. If the beatific vision is a genuine promise — if we really will see God "face to face" — then we must be the kind of beings who are capable of such sight. Physical organisms, lacking any immaterial intellect, are not capable of a direct, spiritual, unmediated vision of God. Only beings with souls are. Therefore, if the beatific vision is true, physicalism is false.

B. "Theosis Is Just a Metaphor for Moral Transformation"

Some Protestants have suggested that theosis or deification is merely a metaphorical way of describing moral transformation — becoming more virtuous, more loving, more Christlike in our behavior. On this reading, there is no need for an immaterial soul; moral improvement can happen in a purely physical organism.

But this reading is inadequate for several reasons. First, the tradition has always understood theosis as more than moral improvement. It involves genuine participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) — an ontological reality, not merely a behavioral change. Second, even moral transformation requires genuine intentionality, genuine knowledge, and genuine virtue — all of which, as we have seen, are undermined by physicalism. Third, the Eastern Orthodox tradition — where theosis has been most fully developed — has consistently understood it as involving the transformation of the whole person, including the soul, not merely the modification of behavior. And fourth, the Reformed tradition, as we have seen, also affirms a robust understanding of union with Christ that goes beyond mere moral improvement.

C. "Science Has Shown That the Mind Is the Brain"

This is the broadest and most common physicalist objection — the claim that neuroscience has demonstrated that mental states are brain states, and therefore there is no need for an immaterial soul. I have addressed this objection at length in Chapter 4, where the philosophical case for substance dualism is presented, but a brief response is appropriate here.

Neuroscience has indeed shown that mental states correlate with and depend on brain states. Damage the brain, and mental function is impaired. Stimulate certain brain areas, and certain experiences result. No dualist denies this. But correlation is not identity. Dependence is not identity. The radio analogy is instructive: a radio depends on its circuitry for reception, but the signal is not identical to the circuitry. Damage the radio and the sound degrades — but the signal still exists. Similarly, the brain may be the instrument through which the soul interacts with the physical world. Damage the brain and the soul's expression is impaired — but the soul itself persists. The NDE evidence surveyed in Chapter 5 strongly supports this: consciousness can function even when the brain is severely impaired or clinically dead.

Moreover, the "hard problem of consciousness" — the problem of explaining why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience — remains completely unsolved by neuroscience. David Chalmers has shown that even a complete physical description of the brain would leave out the most important thing: what it is like to be conscious. This gap is not merely an unsolved puzzle; it is evidence that consciousness is not a physical phenomenon.³¹

D. "Physicalists Affirm Sanctification Too"

I want to be very fair here. Physicalists like Nancey Murphy, Joel Green, and Kevin Corcoran are genuine Christians who affirm the reality of sanctification. They are not trying to undermine the Christian life. Their intentions are good, and their faith is sincere.

But good intentions do not resolve philosophical problems. The question is not whether physicalists want to affirm sanctification but whether their ontology can sustain it. I have argued that it cannot — that physicalism undermines the genuine intentionality, genuine knowledge, and genuine virtue that sanctification requires. This is not a criticism of physicalists' faith or piety. It is a criticism of the philosophical system they have adopted — a system that cannot bear the weight of the theological doctrines they want to affirm.

VI. The Cumulative Argument: Beatific Vision, Theosis, and Sanctification Together

Let me now draw the threads of this chapter together. We have examined three doctrines — the beatific vision, theosis, and sanctification — and shown that each presupposes an immaterial dimension of the human person. We have also examined Wilkinson's argument that Christ's human nature, as the paradigm for all human nature, includes a rational soul — and that any anthropology that denies the soul contradicts conciliar Christology.

These four arguments reinforce one another and form a cumulative case. The beatific vision requires a soul because the vision is an intellectual, spiritual, unmediated knowledge of God that no physical organ can produce. Theosis requires a soul because participation in the divine nature requires an immaterial "meeting point" between the human and the divine. Sanctification requires a soul because the transformation of the "inner man" is more than neural rewiring — it is the genuine renewal of the person in knowledge, virtue, and relationship with God. And Wilkinson's paradigm argument shows that all of these requirements are grounded in Christology itself: Christ has a soul, we are being conformed to His image, therefore we have souls.

Physicalism fails all four tests. It reduces the beatific vision to a brain state, theosis to the modification of a physical organism, sanctification to neural rewiring, and Christ's paradigmatic humanity to a body without a soul. Each of these reductions is theologically devastating. Together, they constitute yet another powerful reason to reject physicalism and affirm substance dualism.

VII. Conclusion: The Incarnation, the Soul, and Our Ultimate Destiny

We began this chapter by noting that the problems physicalism creates for Christology extend beyond the core issues addressed in Chapters 21–28. The beatific vision, theosis, and sanctification are three additional areas where physicalism proves inadequate — where its denial of the immaterial soul produces theological results that are incompatible with the Christian faith as the church has always understood it.

The beatific vision — the direct, unmediated knowledge of God — has been understood across the entire tradition as an activity of the soul, not the brain. Aquinas, Turretin, Calvin, Edwards, Owen, and Hodge all agreed: the soul sees God with the intellect, not with the eyes. On physicalism, this vision is reduced to a brain state — a particularly fancy pattern of neural firing. But a brain state is not a vision of God. The tradition is right: only an immaterial soul can gaze upon the immaterial God.

Theosis — the participation of human nature in the divine life — requires an immaterial dimension of the person that serves as the "meeting point" between the human and the divine. On physicalism, there is no such meeting point. A physical organism cannot "participate in the divine nature" in any meaningful sense. The Incarnation — where God assumes a complete human nature (body + soul) and thereby grounds the possibility of theosis — loses its explanatory power if Christ's human nature has no soul.

Sanctification — the transformation of the "inner man" by the Holy Spirit — presupposes an inner man to transform. On physicalism, there is no inner man — only a brain. Sanctification becomes neural rewiring. But the Bible's language of the "inner man," the "spirit," the "heart," and the "mind" points to something deeper than neurons. It points to a soul that is being renewed by the Spirit of God.

And Christ Himself — the paradigm of sanctified, glorified, deified humanity — has a soul. The councils say so. The Bible says so. The entire tradition says so. If He has a soul, and if we are being conformed to His image, then we have souls too. Physicalism, by denying what the councils affirm, places itself outside the boundaries of orthodox Christianity.

I want to close this chapter on a pastoral note. The doctrines we have discussed — the beatific vision, theosis, sanctification — are not merely academic topics for theological debate. They are the beating heart of the Christian hope. The beatific vision is the promise that we will one day see God face to face — that the dim mirror of this life will give way to a direct, overwhelming, joyful encounter with the living God. Theosis is the promise that we will be drawn into the very life of the Trinity — that we will "participate in the divine nature," not as God but as creatures elevated by grace to share in divine fellowship. Sanctification is the promise that the Holy Spirit is at work in us right now, transforming us from the inside out, making us more like Jesus, renewing our minds and hearts and wills.

These are glorious promises. They are promises that require a soul to fulfill. And they are promises that the Incarnation itself guarantees — because God the Son assumed a complete human nature, body and soul, so that the whole human person might be redeemed, transformed, and brought into the presence of God forever.

Physicalism cannot sustain these promises. Substance dualism can. And that, I believe, is yet another reason to affirm what the church has always affirmed: that human beings are more than their bodies. We are body and soul, created in the image of God, destined for the vision of God, called to participate in the divine nature, and being transformed by the Spirit into the likeness of Christ — who is Himself the paradigm of what it means to be truly, fully, gloriously human.